jamesqf -
Quote:
Originally Posted by jamesqf
...
Second, as long as Alzheimer's hasn't set in, you can still learn. The problem with many Americans these days is that they're in the position of a lifelong couch potato who's told he has to get up and run a marathon today. They've been told all their lives that "it's cool to be dumb", that people who actually like learning & doing things that require mental effort are nothing but geeks and nerds. Minds, like bodies, require exercise or they get flabby and out of shape.
|
TeeVee has indeed made it worse, but this is not a recent phenomenon in American culture :
How Anti-Intellectualism Is Destroying America - August 15, 2008
Quote:
Terrence McNally: Richard Hofstadter's 1963 classic, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, described our anti-intellectualism as "older than our national identity." Yet our founders developed a form of government that demanded an informed citizenry. How do these two things fit together?
Susan Jacoby: That's really the American paradox. For example, there is no country that has had more faith in education as an instrument of social mobility. No country in the West democratized education earlier, but no country has been more suspicious of too much education. We've always thought of education as good if it gets you a better job, but bad if it makes you think too much.
|
Most of the time I hear how people can't wait to get out of school. If I were rich, I would become a perpetual student because going to school is "fun" for me.
In terms of rocket scientists and politicians with law degrees, I think we had a scientist called Jimmy Carter. I really liked him, but he has since been characterized as being ineffective when it comes to political skills. It's too simplistic to say that a rocket scientist is better suited to run the country. No matter how much you may dislike it, you need someone capable of winding their way through bureaucracies that exist in all political institutions. Maybe that doesn't require a lawyer, but it requires people skills that you don't always find in scientists. Like it or not, you need to convince a populace that conservation is better than gluttony.
CarloSW2